Cloud service providers enter NSW Govt data centre

Marketplace starts up.

The NSW Government has revealed 60 cloud service providers have registered to be part of a private marketplace for IT services to be hosted within two state-of-the-art data centres that come online this year.

The data centres, one of which officially went live today, will also house NSW Government IT equipment.

A second Metronode data centre at Unanderra on the NSW south coast is due to come online later this month.

Constance expected the government would achieve energy savings "in the millions" of dollars by consolidating existing server rooms and data centres run by agencies into the two Metronode facilities.

When further data halls are constructed, the Silverwater facility is expected to house about $200 million of NSW Government IT equipment.

The facility achieved Tier III certification from the Uptime Institute, which attended today's launch, making the data centre one of only around 70 globally to have met the requirements for official certification.

Constance said the Silverwater facility would make NSW "the envy of all other governments in Australia, not just at a state-based level but at a Commonwealth level."

He said interested governments had already made approaches to NSW over the new facility.

The high-security Silverwater facility requires keycard and biometric authentication to move between areas.

It is divided into three "pavilions". The front contains a security office, twin telecommunications point-of-presence rooms and two build rooms, where the government will be able to set up and test IT infrastructure prior to putting it into the data halls.

The data halls are mostly free-cooled. There are mechanical direct expansion chillers available, but Metronode believes these will only run for about 15 percent of the year.

Power is monitored to the suite level, though it can optionally go down to the rack or port level.

The facility already has a diverse fibre route supplied by Nextgen but is carrier neutral, and the company expects more fibre operators to connect to the facility now that it is open for business.

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